


Scars and Faces from the Past

by the_usual_suspects



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-War, Eventual Smut, Fluff, M/M, One Year Later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 16:03:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4066063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_usual_suspects/pseuds/the_usual_suspects
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy get thrown back together after a year of reflecting on the past and things get intense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars and Faces from the Past

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a very rough beginning to a story that's still rough around the edges. So far I've just written a bit of fluff and exposition but hopefully I'll update often with more smut and more action. Be patient with me, we'll see where this story goes.

Draco shivered as his feet pressed into the cold floor. He pushed himself off of his bed and blew hot air into his cupped hands, trying to stay warm. The empty, destitute Malfoy manor was alway cold now. It was only him in a massive house, filled with halls that Voldemort himself had paced through. On the coldest, darkest days, Draco could still hear his cold laugh echoing throughout the dark house. Draco shuffled into his bathroom, and looked himself over. He was still fit as ever, as he worked out intensely to stop himself from thinking too much, but his hair was long and shaggy, brushing the tops of his shoulders. He pulled on his pointed nose and ran his fingers over the creases that had formed around his mouth from his years without smiling. He pushed his hair back and splashed water onto his face.  
Draco remembered the days just after the war had ended while his parents were still on trial. His father had regressed into a pathetic, desperate mess, pleading for his life and offering up information that the ministry had had for years. The judges had simply laughed at his appeals for mercy. He had been sentenced to receive a Dementor's kiss. Draco's mother on the other hand had been given a lesser punishment, a short 5 years in Azkaban. She died after 6 months. Draco missed them, because for all of their faults, they had loved him. His still hated them though, for forcing him into a war he wanted no part of. At least not on the side they had chosen for him.  
Draco moved around his house like a ghost, moving silently and softly from room to room. He avoided the main hall, where Voldemort had piled the bodies of the goblins who failed to protect his horcrux, where he pretended that he was unable to recognize Harry, and where Bellatrix had tortured the Granger girl. He sunk into a chair in his kitchen, picking at left overs from the night before.  
The worst images that filled his head were the ones from that final battle. His schoolmates laying dead in the halls of the school that he had loved and that he had helped to destroy. Harry Potter saving his life. Twice. Then seeing the groundskeeper carrying Harry's limp body across the stone yard, trailing behind the Dark Lord. And being called by his parents, desperate to take him from the war and save themselves. But the worst memory of all was Voldemort's embrace, being pressed against his rough robes and skin that was cold like a corpse. The way that he had breathed over Draco's shoulder with his arms wrapped gently around him was haunting.  
Draco threw his dish into the sink, into a pile that had been mounting up for months. He ventured down to the dungeons that his father had installed below their home, where Voldemort's prisoners had awaited their torture. He sat on the cold stone floors and dreamt of what it would have been like to have been on the other side of the war. If he hadn't had to fight alongside his father. If he hadn't plotted to kill Dumbledore. If he hadn't walked across that courtyard into Voldemort's arms.  
The cold air blowing across the trails of tears down his pale face shook Draco away from the what-ifs and back into reality.  
He hadn't left the house in ages and he was beginning to run low on food. He slunk out of the door and into the snow, focusing on the crunch of it below his shoes.  
\---------  
Harry woke to the sound of Teddy's screams. He groggily got up off of the couch and shuffled up the stairs of Grimauld place, into his godson's room. He lifted Teddy out of his crib, stroking his currently blue hair and rubbing his back. Tonks' mom had died the previous year, leaving Harry as his guardian. Only a year had passed during the war and every time that Harry laid eyes on Teddy, his heart sank thinking about Tonks and Remus. Too many people had died that day, but he had finally begun to accept that it wasn't all his fault. That didn't stop the nightmares, though. Harry laid Teddy back down, noticing that his hair had returned to a calm purple. He walked down the hall to his room sleepily threw himself onto his bed, picking up the scrapbook that Hermione had given him a month ago. It was an add-on to the one that Hagrid had given him at the end of his first year, and it had a more extensive collection of his family. The first pages were still photos of his parents, dancing together, Lily's vibrant red hair swinging softly through the air. Hermione's additions included photos of herself, Ron, the twins (which sent more pangs through Harry's heart), group photos of the Weasley's, Hagrid, Neville, Luna, a few scattered ones of Dumbledore, many of Sirius and Remus, and of course the Order. Harry smiled as each of the faces in the book smiled and waved up at him. He read the note that Ron had scribbled in the back for him.  
Harry-  
Don't be a prat. Come around to the Burrow. Mum is going crazy not hearing from you for so long. She says you bloody well bring Teddy over here soon. Don't worry about what happened with Ginny, and don't blame any of the shit we went through on yourself. Hermione and me will be here when you are ready to get your ass back into the world again.  
-Ron  
Harry smirked at Molly's concern. He was so glad she and Arthur had taken him under their wing. He realized really did need some help with Teddy, as he was barely scrapping by and he needed to get a job to keep his mind off of everything. He had been such a reck. He had broken up with Ginny because he had lost the feelings he once had for her. He felt like he was no longer himself. But he also worried that who he had been in the past was simply a fragment of who Voldemort had been. The only way that he'd be able to get back to the real world would be to see his friends and get a moment away from Teddy.  
The next morning, he sent an owl to the Burrow, warning Ron that he and Teddy would be dropping in later. Harry gave Teddy a bath and told him stories about Remus and Tonks. The first lesson that Remus had given at Hogwarts,  
Tonks' eternal clumsiness. The stories always made little Teddy smile and his hair would glow a beautiful yellow. Teddy was too little to apparate or Floo, so Harry had bought an old tattered car which he didn't even know the make or model of. He drove away from Grimauld place, intent on reaching the Burrow before two o'clock.  
\--------  
Draco held the warm coffee cup in his hands as he stepped out onto the pavement in front of his most frequented muggle coffee shop. He had been planing on just stopping into a shop for groceries but got distracted by the scent of coffee. As he watched the cars go by, waiting for a gap in which he could hurry across the street, he spotted a familiar face at the wheel of one of them. Harry Potter made quick eye contact with him, but the look was long enough for Draco to know that it was indeed Harry. The first thing that popped into his mind was 'What the hell is Harry Potter doing driving a muggle car?' Draco shook his head, and told himself that it really didn't matter why Potter was driving. Not Potter nor anyone from the past really mattered anymore. He hadn't spoken to Pansy or Doyle or any of the people he had once associated himself with. He slumped onto a park bench, and stared at the muggles walking past. He was ashamed that it had taken him so long to treat them like his equals. The pain and horrors he had experienced under Voldemort had shaken any whims of superiority out of his head. Everything thing that he had believed in for the first sixteen years of his life had been uprooted by the pressure and fear that he had been succumbed to during his sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts. His father had been in jail and he had been forced to lead a conspiracy to kill Dumbledore, driven by the thought of redemption for his father in the eyes of the Dark Lord. As he thought back to his sixth year he remembered how he had become something less than human. His eyes had been sunken, his cheeks shallow, his ribs sharp and his skin right. He had been a pale skeleton. The terrible acts that he had committed were eating him alive from the inside out. Draco tucked his hand into his coat, and beneath his shirt. His icy fingers glided along the thin white scar that stretched down his chest from his clavicle. Potter had given him a permanent mark to remember his crimes by.  
Draco finished of his coffee and slid his hands into his pockets. He walked briskly down the muggle street, keeping his head tucked down. He knew that know one in the muggle world knew him or what he had done, but he had found that occasionally, if he was tired enough, he could see Dumbledore standing, starring at him from a distance. Seeing the ghost of the man who's death he had caused was bad enough, but the look of forgiveness and sympathy that always seemed to be in Dumbledore's shining eyes was the worst part of it all.  
\-----------  
"You'll never guess who I saw." Harry exclaimed as he came through the door of the Burrow.  
"Hagrid?" Hermione guessed from her seat on one of the lopsided couches, where she was cuddled against Ron.  
"No, no not Hagrid" said Harry as he set Teddy down on the carpet in the center of the sitting room.  
Ron half-heartedly muttered: "Well who then?" as he sank of the couch to play with Teddy.  
"None other than Draco Malfoy." Harry said smirking.  
"Bloody hell, what was the bastard up to?"  
"Watch your language Ronald Weasley" Molly said as she bounded across the room to embrace Harry. "We've been so worried about you dear."  
"I'm fine Molly, no need to worry" Harry assured her.  
Molly picked up Teddy and headed into the kitchen muttering to him about food, as Harry told Hermione and Ron about seeing Draco.  
"He looked well other than the fact that he was walking out of a muggle cafe."  
"Malfoy? In a muggle shop?"  
"I couldn't believe it either. There was something different about him though. We made eye contact just for a second. He looked... I dunno, sad."  
"Harry have you gone soft?" Ron said mockingly. "After all the things that man's done, he deserves to be in Azkaban, right alongside his shell of a father and his mother."  
"I think they're both dead, Ron" Hermione said quietly.  
Harry shook his head. He knew that there had to be something strange going on with Malfoy. But he reminded himself that it no longer mattered. Figuring out Draco's plots and schemes was no longer an issue. Still, Draco's deep grey eyes and pale, pointed face lingered in the back of his mind for the rest of the day.  
Harry sat down for dinner with the Weasley clan, plus Hermione. He noticed that Molly still had a place set for Fred beside George. Teddy sat beside Molly, who was feeding him sausages, just like the ones that she had fed Harry the first time he came to the Burrow. Harry had brought along some butterbeer, which everyone was enjoying immensely. As they sat around the long table, Harry carefully observed the faces of each member of his family. Ron and Hermione held hands on top of the table, sneaking glances at each other between conversations and laughs. Ginny was focused on Charlie, who was telling her stories of the latest dragon that he had helped to tame. She looked up at Harry briefly, and smiled. He was sad to not be with her anymore but he could tell that it was best. George sat entertaining Percy, Ron and Hermione with his newest Weasley product, some sort of prank snitch that couldn't be caught. Bill and Fleur were absent from the table, but their seats were seemingly being used as storage for Arthur's latest muggle items. Arthur himself was tinkering with them on his lap under the table, trying to avoid drawing Molly's attention. Molly was still enjoying herself with Teddy, who had changed his hair to match the trademark Weasley red, and Harry noticed the smallest scatter of freckles across his godson's nose. Harry leaned over to brush some crumbs out of Teddy's bright hair.  
"Molly," he began timidly, "would you mind taking Teddy in for a while? It's just--"  
"Harry dear, it's no trouble. I'd love it. It'll give me something to do other than worry about my own children."  
"Thank you" Harry said, sighing with relief. He would head back to Grimauld place that night and be able to head to London the next morning to look for work whether it was at the newly rebuilt Ministry or in Diagon Alley.  
Harry said goodnight to the Weasley's and Hermione. He kissed Teddy goodnight and promised that he'd see him soon. He walked out to the car after thanking Molly one last time and settled into the driver's seat. Ron came dashing out of the house after him.  
"Oy! Harry! Wait up!"  
Harry rolled down the window and Ron bent down to speak.  
"I'm headin' up to the Auror's offices tomorrow to see if they'll take me. Wanna join?"  
Harry hadn't even thought about being an Auror for a long time, he had forgotten about where he had once planned to go with his life.  
"Ya Ron, that sounds brilliant. Just Floo by Grimauld place tomorrow morning around 9 and we can head down to the Ministry together. Sound good?"  
"Ya, see you tomorrow then mate" Ron said, tapping Harry's crappy car as he ran back towards the Burrow, waving.  
Harry drove home slowly, being cautious of the snow on the dark, frozen roads. He parked in front of Grimauld place, but instead of going inside, he slipped down the block to a little muggle pub. Staring down at his feet, he asked for his usual from the bartender. He rubbed the condensation from the outside of the glass with his thumbs, tracing little swirls through the water droplets. He felt someone take the stool next to him but didn't look up. Harry turned his attention to the stranger's feet and saw a pair of sleek black dress shoes, which no one in their right mind would wear out during the English winter. A deep, drawling voice, which seemed familiar said "I'll have what he's having."  
Harry looked up to put a face to the voice and saw none other than Draco Malfoy staring back at him.  
Draco smirked at him. "Hello Potter, still have that lousy scar I see."


End file.
